Summary

On the morning of September 11, 2001, shock waves rippled through the country as the United States came under terrorist attack. In New York, Washington, D.C., and Somerset County, Pennsylvania, four planes piloted by members of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization left death, shattered innocence, and incomprehensible destruction in their wake. While the attacks united all Americans in their shared horror and grief, the actual witnesses to these events often bear the heaviest weight of these painful memories. Never Forget is a collection of unbelievably moving stories of loss, heartache, and survival, as told in the words of those closest to the unfolding tragedy.

In stark, haunting detail, these vivid personal accounts bring to life the events as they happened: from the harrowing moments after the planes hit the twin Towers of the World Trade Center to the overwhelming cloud of debris that enveloped lower Manhattan when the towers fell, the devastating conversations with loved ones on the hijacked flights, the terrifying hours spent trapped in the fallen buildings, and the painstaking recovery efforts at each site. Moses Lipson, an eighty-nine-year-old construction inspector, walks down from the eighty-eighth floor of Tower 1. Steven Bienkowski, a police officer in the New York Harbor Unit Scuba Team, watches helplessly from a helicopter as people trapped in the upper floors of Tower 1 reach from the windows to beg for a miracle rescue. Tim McGinn, a now-retired NYPD lieutenant, shoots out a window and saves at least thirty people from suffocation. Young Lyzbeth Glick's heart drops when she realizes that her husband, Jeremy, who changed his travel plans at the last moment, is now on the hijacked flight from Newark. As the Pentagon blazes, Lieutenant Colonel Ted Anderson plunges back inside to rescue civilians trapped by fallen debris. Weeks later, the rescue and recovery efforts at Ground Zero continue. Construction worker Joseph Bradley looks on as a firefighter gently closes the eyes and straightens the suit of a woman whose body is found in the rubble. Benjamin Garelick, seven years old, raises seven hundred dollars with a lemonade stand to "help the firemen buy a new truck."

As these unforgettable stories reveal, many Americans transcended their own confusion and despair to help one another escape, to offer one another kindness, and to affirm life in the face of catastrophe. This concert of voices shows, as never before, the heartbreaking grief and slow but uplifting healing process that the people of this nation have experienced individually and as one.

Booklist Review

Three new books are outstanding in relating personal stories of September 11. Fink is a print and TV journalist, and his wife, Lois Mathias, is an environmental activist and child advocate. Their book gathers first-person narratives by individuals whose lives were intimately impacted by the events of that day. From a construction inspector at the World Trade Center to a musician who lived in an apartment close by and witnessed the horrendous damage done by the first plane; from a young man and woman who escaped from their Lower Manhattan apartment and ferried to Staten Island, only to be subjected to a humiliating shower in public by hospital personnel, to the mother of a man on the hijacked flight that went down in Pennsylvania--all have their poignant, difficult stories to tell, which are neither easy to put down nor easy to keep reading. That flight, the one that crashed in Pennsylvania, presumably on its way to devastate either the White House or the Capitol, is the subject of a riveting account by Longman, a reporter for the New York Times. In his words, the passengers of United Flight 93 "thwarted" the terrorists; it is clear to him that the "passengers and crew acted with heroic defiance." Longman spoke with all the affected families except one. His account of the "brave uprising [that] will surely be remembered as a defining moment in American history" gives us an incredibly detailed and personal tale of that horrific episode, during which ordinary citizens proved their mettle and altered their fate. Murphy's book is another oral history but is in no way redundant. He, too, is a New York Times reporter, and his collection of approximately 40 survivor stories is underscored by the idea that when September 11 "was all over, it was a day of national calamity. But it was also a day of individual human heartache." The personal accounts he compiles here serve to support that sentiment to the fullest. One can't find a more eloquent explanation of the situation at the World Trade Center than the words spoken by the woman who was master of the keys at the Center: "I wasn't burnt or severely bruised. My pain was somewhere else--and it still is. Inside my heart, it hurts so bad." And only the most inured readers will not react with tears to the story of the sight-impaired man being carefully led down the stairs from high in the Center by his devoted seeing-eye dog. --Brad Hooper